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Summary
Summary
It was an epic downfall. In twenty-four seasons pitcher Roger Clemens put together one of the greatest careers baseball has ever seen. Seven Cy Young Awards, two World Series championships, and 354 victories made him a lock for the Hall of Fame. But on December 13, 2007, the Mitchell Report laid waste to all that. Accusations that Clemens relied on steroids and human growth hormone provided and administered by his former trainer, Brian McNamee, have put Clemens in the crosshairs of a Justice Department investigation. Why did this happen? How did it happen? Who made the decisions that altered some lives and ruined others? How did a devastating culture of drugs, lies, sex, and cheating fester and grow throughout Major League Baseball's clubhouses? The answers are in these extraordinary pages. American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime is about much more than the downfall of a superstar. While the fascinating portrait of Clemens is certainly at the center of the action, the book takes us outside the white lines and inside the lives and dealings of sports executives, trainers, congressmen, lawyers, drug dealers, groupies, a porn star, and even a murderer-- all of whom have ties to this saga. Four superb investigative journalists have spent years uncovering the truth, and at the heart of their investigation is a behind-the-scenes portrait of the maneuvering and strategies in the legal war between Clemens and his accuser, McNamee. This compelling story is the strongest examination yet of the rise of illegal drugs in America's favorite sport, the gym-rat culture in Texas that has played such an important role in spreading those drugs, and the way Congress has dealt with the entire issue. Andy Pettitte, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, and Chuck Knoblauch are just a few of the other players whose moving and sometimes disturbing stories are illuminated here as well. The New York Daily News Sports Investigative Team has written the definitive book on corruption and the steroids era in Major League Baseball. In doing so, they have managed to dig beneath the disillusion and disappointment to give us a stirring look at heroes who all too often live unheroic shadow lives.
Author Notes
Michael O'Keeffe, Christian Red, Teri Thompson, and Nathaniel Vinton (shown left to right) are the New York Daily News Sports Investigative Team, which has been at the forefront of the issue of performance-enhancing drugs since the team's inception in 2000. One of the only investigative units of its kind in American sports journalism, the I-Team has won more than a dozen major awards for its work.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a definitive examination of illegal drug use in America's pastime, "sports investigative team" Thompson, Vinton, O'Keeffe and Red (of New York's Daily News) focus on one-time Hall of Fame-bound pitcher Roger Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who accused Clemens of relying on steroids and human growth hormone to prolong his lucrative career. (Clemens, upon this book's publication, continued to deny the allegations.) Both men were featured prominently in 2007's 409-page Mitchell Report investigation; in this decade-spanning account, they're surrounded by a motley cast that includes sports execs, drug dealers, lawyers, mistresses, elected officials, and former and current players such as Jose Canseco, Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez. Richly detailed, the muscular narrative often reads like a thriller, though numerous subplots don't always connect. Relying on hundreds of on- and off-the-record interviews and access to public and private documents, this is an intricate and compelling case in which there are no heroes, but a notable villain-the League itself-whose lax approach to the issue ensures baseball's steroids era isn't over. (May) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* By now the scenario is all too familiar. There is the iconic sports figure who defies the effects of aging and the ravages of his sport. There is this athlete's shadowy personal trainer. Then come accusations of steroids use, a federal investigation, flat denials, Senate hearings, and so on. Now, take this framework and plug in Roger Clemens, one of the greatest baseball players of his generation, and the familiar story becomes shocking all over again. Clemens, who earned seven Cy Young Awards and was one of baseball's elite, saw his reputation torched when he was named in the famed Mitchell Report on the illegal use of steroids in major-league baseball. The investigative team for the New York Daily News traces Clemens' spectacular fall in this comprehensive and well-written account. Using court documents, copious interviews, and other sources, they painstakingly lay out their position that Clemens began using steroids back in 1998, when he first asked his personal trainer, Brian McNamee, to inject him. The book then carefully follows Clemens' career, showing a relationship between Clemens' accomplishments on the mound and his use of performance-enhancing drugs. The account often reads like a detective novel, with the authors revealing the underbelly of professional baseball the furtive injections, gravy trainers (hangers-on), secret mistresses, and smarmy agents who pervade the sport. Things turn ugly when federal authorities put the squeeze on McNamee, and Clemens lashes out at McNamee and demands a congressional hearing. The reporting here equals that of another steroids-in-baseball book, Fainaru-Wada's Game of Shadows (2006), and it builds a daunting case against Clemens.--Eberle, Jerry Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHY do Yankee fans still love the Yanks? The team has embarrassed its supporters by leading the league in steroid scandals - thanks, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez. It's also made them cringe by strong-arming New York City into giving the team public funds to subsidize its new $1.5 billion stadium while simultaneously flexing its herculean financial muscles to grab expensive free agents like a spoiled heir stockpiling rare sports cars. Last off-season, the Yanks allocated $423 million for three players while getting more than $1 billion in tax-exempt bonds from the city, costing taxpayers millions in revenues. It can be thrilling to see the Bombers win free-agent battles year after year - and why snouldn't they, if they can make more money than other teams by selling lots of tickets at high prices and draw even more fans to YES, their multibillion-dollar television network? But then why does the richest team in American sports need taxpayer help? This is the side of the Yanks embodied in Rodriguez, with his steroid-stained résumé and the biggest contract in baseball despite no postseason success. A-Rod sometimes seems preceded in Yankee history by Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth, with their home run swings, household brand names, outsize personalities and knack for controversy, but - critical difference - Mr. October and the Bambino shone in the big moments. Rodriguez consistently fails in the clutch in the regular season. That doesn't move the turnstiles. What makes fans proud of the pinstripes is the Yankees' Jeterian side. Derek Jeter, with his four World Series rings and the respect of everyone in baseball for being a stand-up guy and playing the game the right way, is the latest in a long string of Bronx Bombers with dignity, character and class - recall Bernie Williams, Thurman Munson, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford and Lou Gehrig. These men are why New Yorkers feel the Yanks are the sporting extension of the ego of a city that sees itself filled with winners who are tough under pressure. The Rodriguez side is perhaps what the rest of the country thinks of us: larger than life, financially bloated and perpetually controversial. Alas, in recent years it seems the A-Rod side is dominating. The '09 Yanks are streaky, and though sometimes great, they spent most of the first half in second place in the American League East behind the still-hated Red Sox, who have beaten the Yanks all eight times they've played this year. Alex Rodriguez returns to the Yankees dugout after hitting a home run, July 2009. The Yankees' Rodriguez/Jeter split personality leads to inconsistent baseball but makes for fascinating reading. Three books give us an unsettling peek inside the team: "A-Rod," by Selena Roberts, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated (and a former reporter and columnist for The New York Times); "The Yankee Years," by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci; and "American Icon," which focuses on Roger Clemens, by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe and Christian Red, the sports investigative team for The Daily News in New York. Because so many of the players discussed are still Yanks, these books have an almost magazine-like immediacy as they reveal a diseased team that doesn't seem to have the chemistry needed to win it all anytime soon. Johnny Damon has struggled with existential crises that make him uncertain whether he really wants to play baseball. Robinson Cano has lapses in concentration and has to be prodded into doing the work it takes to be a good major leaguer. And things have gotten so bad between Rodriguez and Jeter that everyone feels the frost, forcing players and management to choose sides. Management sides with Rodriguez, the clubhouse with Jeter. "The city welcomed him," Roberts writes of Rodriguez. "The team, though, rejected him. They did not like his haute couture flair, his high-maintenance needs and his manicured quotes for the media. They also knew that he was a hypocrite, playing the Boy Scout by day and the Bad Boy at night." The Bronx Zoo is back. We learn many of Rodriguez's secrets in Roberts's meticulously reported psychological profile, which will give fans no comfort about the man who's contracted to be a Yankee through the 2017 season. She finds Rodriguez an extremely insecure, ultra-vain, self-absorbed, gullible attention addict who's emotionally stunted, has no sense of self, is constantly in need of validation and has no real friends. At one point in his book, Torre implores several players to help with Rodriguez. "I remember calling in Sheff, Jeter, Giambi, Georgie" - by which he means the catcher Jorge Posada - "and just saying, 'He's got to feel important.'" But he can never be just one of the guys and is weirdly fixated on Jeter. Rodriguez is superior in every possible baseball metric (except clutch hitting), but Jeter is more loved, respected and revered by fans and players. "Jeet knows who he is," Giambi tells Roberts. "He doesn't blow his own horn. . . . He doesn't do something and then tell the media, 'Hey, look at me lead,' to be validated." The Jeter issue drives Rodriguez crazy. Even away from the park, Roberts says, when he's in nightclubs hitting on women who know nothing about baseball, he remains obsessive, asking them, "Who's hotter, me or Derek Jeter?" Roberts finds him rather pathetic with women in general. He picks up his future wife, Cynthia, by pretending to have run out of gas. And after his daughter Natasha is born, Rodriguez feels pushed aside: "Alex adored Natasha but was also taken aback at how much of Cynthia's attention was funneled to their newborn, not to him. Alex knew it was wrong to feel that way." Rodriguez, according to Roberts, is deep down still the abandoned little boy who was scarred by his father, Victor, who left the family when Alex was 10. "He had always been a sensitive boy; Victor's departure made him even more fragile emotionally. Neighbors recall seeing Alex's eyes brim with tears at the slightest criticism." His father's absence became part of his identity, and his baseball success filled the void that had been created. But his self-esteem remains so fragile that he's afraid of failing, and he's so painfully self-aware that he's gripped by a performance anxiety that makes high-pressure moments nearly impossible. Which is why he usually fails in them. Yankee players tell Roberts he's "the vainest hitter they've ever known." Torre takes that sentiment deeper in his book. "When it comes to a key situation, he can't get himself to concern himself with getting the job done, instead of how it looks," he says. "Allow yourself to be embarrassed. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. And sometimes players aren't willing to do that. They have a reputation to uphold." But through five years as a Yankee, Rodriguez is fashioning a reputation as someone who hits mammoth home runs in the early innings and dribblers to the shortstop with the game on the line. TORRE'S book explains that Rodriguez is a crucial example of why the Yanks have fallen from their dynastic high to a team that's struggled to get out of the division series, despite adding a slew of high-priced players. The expensive imports - Giambi, Randy Johnson, José Contreras, Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano and others - are like off-season Pyrrhic victories, because the new guys tend to erode team chemistry. "The players all hated him," Torre says of Pavano. "It was no secret." The pitcher Mike Mussina called the disabled list "the Pavano," adding: "His body just shut down from actually pitching for six weeks. It's like when you get an organ transplant and your body rejects it. His body rejected pitching." Torre says he watched the Yankees move from the egoless, workmanlike makeup of the late-'90s dynasty into a mismatched collection of self-absorbed, stats-obsessed stars. "It was just not an unselfish team," he says about the 2002 season. "We were all spoiled." He continues: "A number of players out there are trying to do the job to their own satisfaction, instead of getting the job done. A lot of those players are more concerned about what it looks like as opposed to getting dirty and just getting it done." Some of the things players need to do to move their teammates around the bases and win games net them negative statistics. The dynastic Yanks were willing to do those things, while many of the post-dynasty Yanks have their own agendas. "Alex monopolized all the attention," Torre says. "We never really had anybody who craved the attention. . . . He certainly changed just the feel of the club. . . . His focus was on individual stuff." But how could you expect him to be a team guy after his stint with the Texas Rangers? Rodriguez reportedly told their owner, Tom Hicks, which players around the league were using steroids - while he himself was using them. It's poetic justice that steroids have become wrapped up in the Rodriguez story: he's a central figure in the last two decades, when steroids have been the defining issue in baseball. Rodriguez might never have been unmasked if not for Roberts, whose reporting forced him to admit he had taken steroids in the early part of this decade, when he was a Ranger. But Roberts has sources who suggest that Rodriguez also used steroids and/or human growth hormone in high school, when he gained an improbable 25 pounds of muscle between his sophomore and junior years; with his first major league team, the Seattle Mariners; and, according to anonymous players, with the Yankees at least as late as 2007. "Two players close to A-Rod say he has used H.G.H. while with the Yankees based on side effects they've seen," Roberts writes. This is a drug history far longer tha what Rodriguez has admitted to. There's no wiggle room between Rodriguez's position that he did performance-enhancing drugs for a brief period and Roberts's position that he's done them from high school through his Yankee years. History will vindicate one of them, and the other's reputation will suffer greatly. Rodriguez's place in the Hall of Fame could rest on whether Roberts's account is believed. Fittingly, because he is sometimes referred to as the Johnny Appleseed of the steroid movement, José Canseco touches all three books. He's been a substitute father to a high-school-aged Rodriguez, a Yankee under Torre and Clemens's teammate in Toronto. He's gone from team to team spreading the gospel of steroids like a Patient Zero, preaching about their effectiveness and introducing players to dealers. Canseco is like the Kevin Bacon of steroids: in addition to playing with Clemens, he's been teammates with Mark McGwire and Miguel Tejada in Oakland and Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Kevin Brown in Texas. In a scene from "American Icon," Clemens is standing in the locker room one day looking at oral steroids in the hand of Brian McNamee, the trainer who would become his accuser, when Canseco walks up, grabs some pills and shoves them into his own mouth. "American Icon" mostly covers ground that serious baseball fans already know, but it may answer some lingering Yankee questions. Why did Chuck Knoblauch, second baseman during the dynasty, suddenly and mysteriously lose the ability to throw to first base? Possibly because he was using G.H.B., the dieter's drug (also known as a date rape drug), which goes into the central nervous system and can lead to convulsions or twitching or the yips. Also, what really happened to Clemens in that bizarre moment during the 2000 World Series when he grabbed half of Mike Piazza's shattered bat and flung it toward him? Most likely, roid rage. The authors of "American Icon" also argue that because so many players in the majors and minors are taking steroids - insider estimates range from 50 percent to 80 percent - not to be chemically enhanced is to be at a competitive disadvantage. Thus, the choice is often between using steroids and building yourself into a multimillionaire or not using them and losing your job to someone who does and ending up in the minors, making five figures, or out of baseball altogether. With stakes like that, it becomes very hard to stand on principle. How did we get here? Baseball's steroid problem dates back to the late '80s, but no action was taken until the middle of this decade, in large part because of the Major League Baseball Players Association, by far the most powerful union in sports and an enabler in the steroids scandal. Throughout "American Icon" and "A-Rod," we see an obstructionist union that repeatedly blocks testing, is accused of intimidating people who speak out about how big the issue is becoming, sends doctors to tell players how to use steroids safely, and then, after the players are forced to accept testing, tips them off about when testers are coming. Three players tell Roberts that Rodriguez was warned about testers by the union. "The union was going to take care of the superstars," one of the players says. "The big boys made the big money, and that was the bread and butter for the union." BUT in the short term the union's position made sense: steroids aided performance so much that they set off a contract explosion - the average player's salary has jumped from less than $300,000 in the early '80s to more than $3 million now, fattening the union's pockets. And when the truth seeped out about how deep the steroids problem had become, attendance didn't decline. So if players, owners and fans are happy, why should the union get in the way? But the Players Association worked only on behalf of steroid users. It didn't protect those who abstained, and now most of America thinks of all baseball players as guilty. The union was there for Rodriguez, helping him cheat, but it abandoned, say, Jeter, who I feel comfortable assuming isn't roiding - though it feels naïve to assume any major leaguer isn't nowadays. That's how far the union has gone in allowing doubt about its clients to be sown in the minds of fans, and how badly it has allowed the game's reputation to suffer. Some have said steroids are simply the latest drug that players have used to get by, and since chemical enhancement has been part of the game forever, why not just let modern players do whatever they want? This argument is frighteningly absurd. Put aside the fact that the steroid explosion has reduced baseball from a nuanced attempt to move men around the bases to a version of home run derby, because most fans seem to like that fundamental change. The real, unignorable problem, the main reason steroids cannot be allowed to proliferate, is that they are killers. Steroids can lead to several forms of cancer, heart attacks, liver disease, even homicide and suicide. The football star Lyle Alzado died at 43 from a brain tumor that he was certain steroids were responsible for. The high school baseball star Taylor Hooton committed suicide, perhaps because of depression brought on by steroids. Ken Caminiti, the National League's most valuable player in 1996 and an admitted steroid user, died from an accidental drug overdose at 41. An autopsy revealed that coronary artery disease and an enlarged heart had contributed to his death. Too many ballplayers have already gone too far and taken too many drugs. It seems inevitable that in the next decade several retired stars will die young, leaving the entire baseball family heartbroken and searching its soul for answers. The Players Association, the most powerful union in sports, has been an enabler in the steroids scandal. Touré is an on-air contributor to NBC and the author of "Never Drank the Kool-Aid," a collection of essays.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Brian McNamee's memory was pretty good, and one of the things he remembered was sitting by the pool eating a sandwich watching a woman in a peach bikini (with green in it) and board shorts, chasing after one of Roger Clemens's kids at the barbecue at Jose Canseco's house. He asked around and found out she was the nanny for Clemens's kids. "You can get her," McNamee told Congress during his deposition. "If you want to talk to her, her name was Lily," McNamee said. "They left on bad terms. She worked for him for 14 years." Congress couldn't resist. Whether or not Clemens had attended the barbecue-where he supposedly met with a guy about steroids-had become one of the most radical discrepancies between McNamee's sworn statements and those of Clemens. And so the committee investigators contacted Clemens's lawyers on Friday, February 8, to ask for the nanny's name and contact information, and continued to make similar requests throughout the weekend. It seemed a simple and straightforward appeal. But one day passed, and then another, and Hardin still had failed to produce the requested information. The woman who'd been the nanny for the Clemens children, Lily Strain, had grown close with the Clemens family during the years she worked for the pitcher and his wife. She had traveled with the clan and had been there when the boys had taken their first steps and learned to ride bikes. She loved them as if they were her own family. Strain had left the job in 2001-not on bad terms, she said, but to spend more time with her children and grandchildren. It wasn't easy to leave the job; it paid well and she found it difficult to be involved in the boys' lives on a part-time basis. Strain decided it would be best if she made a clean break. Debbie had sent flowers when Strain's mother died, and the occasional card or note. Strain appreciated the gestures, but it was easier to keep her distance. Strain was surprised to get a phone call that Sunday from Roberto, a man she remembered from the years she'd worked for Roger and Debbie. Roberto was an employee of the Clemens family, and he told her that Clemens had an urgent matter to discuss with her. She came to the family's suburban Houston compound that afternoon. It was great to see Roger and Debbie, and to hug the kids she had helped raise. Debbie Clemens's mother, Jan Wilde, was at the house, and so was Debbie's brother, Craig Godfrey. She had missed these people, and it was great to catch up after all those years. Clemens seemed happy to see Strain too, but he had more pressing matters on his mind. He told her that Congress was looking into the allegations about him in the Mitchell Report and that investigators would contact her about a party at Jose Canseco's home. The party, he told her, was in June 1998, right before she went to a luxury resort called the Cheeca Lodge with Deb, Craig, and the boys. Did she remember the trip to the Cheeca Lodge? Strain remembered the trip. She also remembered spending time at the Cansecos' place. She remembered tagging along as Canseco gave Clemens and his family a tour of the home-who would forget a spread like that? She remembered staying at the home with Debbie, Craig, and the kids that evening, but she didn't remember a party. "While I was there, I know that it wasn't a party, it was just the kids and I and Greg [Craig Godfrey], and we were all in the pool," Strain would later say. "I would have remembered the party." There were varying accounts of who was at the party from just about everyone who attended, including those of McNamee, Clemens, Jose and Jessica Canseco; Jose's old friend and former coach, Glenn Dunn; and several Blue Jays players. McNamee remembered that Roger showed up with Debbie after having played golf that morning, Debbie still in her golf clothes. She had been in a foursome at Weston Hills Country Club that included her husband, her brother Craig Excerpted from American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe, Christian Red All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
